Mike Lantowski who is choir director at St. Pius Church in Fairfield, Conn. poses at the church on Thursday December 1, 2011. Lantowski left college with a degree in music and more than $80,000 in student loan debts. That debt has grown to more than $100,000 because he didn't always make payments. less

Mike Lantowski who is choir director at St. Pius Church in Fairfield, Conn. poses at the church on Thursday December 1, 2011. Lantowski left college with a degree in music and more than $80,000 in student loan ... more

Mike Lantowski who is choir director at St. Pius Church in Fairfield, Conn. warms up the group at the church on Thursday December 1, 2011. Lantowski left college with a degree in music and more than $80,000 in student loan debts. That debt has grown to more than $100,000. less

Mike Lantowski who is choir director at St. Pius Church in Fairfield, Conn. warms up the group at the church on Thursday December 1, 2011. Lantowski left college with a degree in music and more than $80,000 in ... more

Mike Lantowski who is choir director at St. Pius Church in Fairfield, Conn. warms up the group at the church on Thursday December 1, 2011. Lantowski left college with a degree in music and more than $80,000 in student loan debts. That debt has grown to more than $100,000 because he didn't always make payments. less

Mike Lantowski who is choir director at St. Pius Church in Fairfield, Conn. warms up the group at the church on Thursday December 1, 2011. Lantowski left college with a degree in music and more than $80,000 in ... more

Tricia Wetmore, who works as a firefighter at Huntington Road Fire Company Number 2 in Stratford, Conn. poses at the firehouse on Tuesday December 13, 2011. Wetmore has amassed over $90,000 in debt for her college education. less

Tricia Wetmore, who works as a firefighter at Huntington Road Fire Company Number 2 in Stratford, Conn. poses at the firehouse on Tuesday December 13, 2011. Wetmore has amassed over $90,000 in debt for her ... more

Kriten Bayusik poses at The Space, a music and art venue where she works in Hamden, Conn. on Thursday December 15, 2011. Bayusik, who graduated at the University of New Haven, has several jobs, all of which are in the field of music which she majored in. less

Kriten Bayusik poses at The Space, a music and art venue where she works in Hamden, Conn. on Thursday December 15, 2011. Bayusik, who graduated at the University of New Haven, has several jobs, all of which are ... more

Kriten Bayusik sets up for a concert at The Space, a music and art venue where she works in Hamden, Conn. on Thursday December 15, 2011. Bayusik, who graduated at the University of New Haven, has several jobs, all of which are in the field of music which she majored in. less

Kriten Bayusik sets up for a concert at The Space, a music and art venue where she works in Hamden, Conn. on Thursday December 15, 2011. Bayusik, who graduated at the University of New Haven, has several jobs, ... more

The 44-year-old Shelton resident said he feels blessed to be working full-time as choir director at St. Pius X Church in Fairfield and part-time organist at Temple Israel in Westport. In doing so, he is putting to use the bachelor's degree in liturgical music he earned 15 years ago from the Manhattan School of Music.

But his gross earnings of about $65,000 a year make it hard to keep up with student loan debt that exceeds $100,000. At times he has missed payments and defaulted. He is now making regular payments, but owes more than when he graduated.

"I am paying $519.38 a month. It's basically like a small mortgage," said Lantowski.

He is part of an increasing number of college-educated individuals drowning in a sea of student loan debt.

The total owed on student loans in the U.S. this year will exceed $1 trillion, which is more than double the amount owed five years ago. Americans now owe more on student loans than on credit cards.

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Increasingly, students who graduate and can't find good paying jobs -- and even those that do find jobs are finding it hard to pay back student loans. Graduates blame the economy, the cost of tuition, and a society-fed notion that a college education is a necessity, even if it means going into debt. They also say that if they realized how much they'd end up owing, they may have never taken the loans.

THE COST OF DREAMS

"If knew then what I know now, I never would have gone to college," said Tricia Wetmore, 32, who has an undergraduate degree from Northeastern University in Boston, and who earned a master's degree from the University of New Haven in 2004. "I talk to my nieces and nephews who are getting to that age. I tell them, `Make sure you know what you want to do because it could be a waste of a lot of money...' "

Wetmore grew up wanting to be a crime scene investigator. It wasn't until midway through her master's that a couple of professors took her aside and confided that there weren't a whole lot of jobs in the Northeast.

"By then, I had already gone through five years of school. I thought, `What am I going to do?' Then I took a firefighters class and fell in love with it," she said.

After college, Wetmore landed a job as a Stratford firefighter, a job she probably could have gotten without going to college or borrowing a penny. Instead, she owes $84,000 in loans and has monthly payments of $595. In two years, the variable interest rate on her private loans will send payments to $795 a month.

Stephanie Toronto, 26, who has received her law degree from Western New England College, will owe about $220,000 once she begins paying back her student loans. The 2003 graduate from Bunnell High School in Stratford, said she knew how much debt she was getting herself into, but at the time she signed the loan agreements, said it seemed like an abstract concept.

When she was in high school, Toronto said when she was told, " `You have to go to college, you have to go to college.' So I went to college and they told us, `Well, you really need a master's or some kind of higher degree.' It's like they just keep pushing you into further education and further in debt."

Kristen Bayusik, of Bridgeport, said she is happy with the music degree she earned from the University of New Haven in May, 2011. But she is worried about her debt. She owes $685 in private loans and $246 in federal loans for a total of $931, which amount to one half of her monthly take home pay of about $2,000.

"It's really stressing me out," said Bayusik, who works three part-time jobs. "They make it so easy to get these loans."

BORROWING MORE

The average amount of debt for Connecticut's Class of 2010 is about $25,360, according to a study done by the Project on Student Debt at the Institute for College Access and Success in California.

Sacred Heart University, for example, is among 20 colleges where the average Class of 2010 graduate left with more than $40,000 in student loans to pay back. It reached $40,865 for the Class of 2010. A full 99 percent left with Sacred Heart with some debt, the report said.

Julie Savino, executive director of financial assistance at Sacred Heart University, said getting families to understand what is the right amount to borrow and what is practical, is a constant battle.

"We always say remember this is a four-year commitment ... Is it going to be income possible? Even when they know, people are borrowing, not just for tuition but for other expenses when they can pay some of it as they go," Savino said.

The University of New Haven's Class of 2010 left with an average debt of $40,911, with 53 percent of graduates owing on loans, said Karen Flynn, New Haven's associate vice president for financial aid.

Flynn said part of the problem is that parents don't -- or can't -- save for their children's college education any more. So they borrow, make their children borrow, or force her to be the bad guy.

"Sometimes parents can't say no to their child. They ask us to explain to students that they can't come here," said Flynn.

Next fall, Flynn said one class of a required freshman experience class will be devoted to financial literacy.

At Fairfield University, the Class of 2010 left with an average of $37,015 in public and private student debt. Judith Dobai, associate vice president for enrollment management at Fairfield University, said the Class of 2011 borrowed less, at just over $31,000.

"We want students to be able to leave here with something that is manageable," Dobai said. "But remember they are also leaving with an education that will serve them for the rest of their life."

Smart borrowing

Experts say often students run up debt that they can avoid if they are more careful about what loans they are taking out to finance their degrees.

Lisa Donner, executive director for the Americans for Financial Reform, said students often finance their education with costly private loans before exhausting all federal loan limits, even when college financial aid officials warn them against that. Federal student loans have fixed interest rates, income-based repayment options and the chance for forgiveness.

Private student loans are typically the hardest to pay back because they carry variable interest rates, lack flexible repayment options, and are unforgivable, according to a report from the Project on Student Debt at The Institute for College Access & Success in California.

Students often say they don't know the difference between federal and private loans. Even if they do, they say the amount they can borrow through federal loan programs don't cover what they owe, making private loans inevitable.

There have been some reforms that have helped students.

President Obama introduced a "Pay as You Earn" plan, which will reduce monthly payments for more than 1.5 million current college students who take out loans this year. It will also forgive leftover debt after 20 years.

As of this year, colleges must post net price calculators on their websites to give students an idea of what attending colleges will cost.

Mark Kantrowitz, publisher of FinAid.org, said net price calculator help push awareness and raise questions about affordability earlier but still need to be made a little easier to use to give families a true idea of cost and affordability.

Advocates also say more needs to be done to help students finance college costs.

Pauline Abernathy, vice president at the institute that produced the student debt report, said private lenders should be required to contact schools to confirm that students have exhausted all federal student loan eligibility. Others say students should be able to refinance private loans for better rates.

And many say with skyrocketing college costs, need-based federal student aid should be increased.

Tuition and room and board at the average public university rose 5.4 percent for in-state students, or about $1,100, to $21,447 this fall, according to the College Board.

Last month, UConn President Susan Herbst unveiled an ambitious plan that would increase tuition by about 25 percent in the next four years. The increase will push tuition and fees to $13,130 by 2016, and to $25,302 with room and board by 2016. At Connecticut State University campuses, tuition and fees will increase by 2.5 percent next fall.

Tuition and fees at private, nonprofit colleges will increase by an average of 4.6 percent this fall at private, according to the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities.

LIVING WITH LOANS

Bayusik, who went to the University of New Haven, lived at home to save money and still graduated in May 2011 owing $63,018 in federal and private student loans. Three days a week she travels to New York City to work as a data manager for College Music Journal, an online music publication. She is also a live audio engineer two nights a week at the Space, in Hamden and on weekends works at Bishop's Orchard in Guilford. She has no plans of getting a master's degree like a lot of her friends.

"I just can't. I don't want to take on any more loans right now," she said.

Wetmore, the firefighter, said her debt makes it impossible to start saving for her 2-year-old Kylee's education.

In addition to student loans, she and her husband Robert, a Milford firefighter, have a mortgage to pay off. Because Wetmore owed so much, they had to take out mortgage insurance when they bought their house. It meant paying an additional $385 a month. Wetmore had hoped she qualified for President Obama's relief program, but she doesn't.

Lantowski, the music director, has been playing the organ in churches since he was 14. To be a music director, quite a number of churches require a college degree, he said.

Lantowski said his debt is higher now then when he left school because of periods when he missed payments, delayed payments and defaulted, causing an original debt of about $80,000 to mushroom to about $105,000.

He doesn't want to discourage younger musicians, but he's not sure he would advise them to take on the debt.

His income, he says, just isn't enough to repay the loans.

Contact Linda Lambeck at 203 330-6218 or lclambeck@ctpost.com. Follow her at twitter.com/lclambeck.